Linnear 01 - The Ninja (53 page)

She lay with her head on his bare chest, her night-dark hair spread in a fan across his pale flesh. He was a long time falling asleep. He felt her breathing gently, rhythmically through his fingertips, the weight of her on his sternum and rib cage. He wondered what it was about her that drew him so powerfully. And could not even decide why it seemed so important for him to know.

Yukio stirred and it seemed a part of him.

‘What is it?’ he asked her.

‘Oh, nothing.’ Her voice was very soft. ‘I was just thinking of a story. It’s the one my mother told me. The only one I remember. Want to hear it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, once upon a time there was a lady. She lived in a castle in Roku-No-Miya. Where that is no one knows to this day -that’s just how my mother used to say it. Anyway, after this girl’s parents died, she was brought up by a governess - she was an extremely well protected girl - and, as the years passed, she grew up into a beautiful young woman.

‘One evening she was introduced to a man and, every evening after that, he would come to the castle and she would entertain him until gradually the place took on a festive air.

‘But during the long afternoons, while she was alone walking in her gardens, the lady thought of the power of fate. She thought about being dependent upon this man for her happiness. Then she would shrug her shoulders and smile wanly into the sun.

‘At night she would lie awake beside her lover, neither happy nor unhappy. What satisfaction she could possess was fleeting.

‘But then, one day, even this was to end, for her lover informed her solemnly that he must go with his father to another district to assist him in his new political post. “But,” he said, “the assignment is but for five years. At the end of that time I shall return for you. Please do me the honour of waiting for me.”

‘The lady openly wept, perhaps not from love itself but from the idea of separation.

‘In six years, nothing was the same at the lady’s castle in Roku-No-Miya. The man had not returned and all the servants’ hall gone as both time and money withered away. The lady and her governess were forced into the old, long-abandoned samurai’s quarters to live.

‘Now there was only rice to eat and great gaps in the wooden frame of the place let in both wind and rain. At length the governess besought her lady, saying, “Forgive me, lady, but your lover has abandoned you. There is a certain man who has been inquiring about you. Since we have so little money…”

‘But the lady would not listen. “I have no use for other adventures now,” she said. “I only wish for the solace of death.”

‘At that moment, in another district, the lady’s lover lay with his new wife. Startled, he sat up in the dark, saying, “Did you hear that?”

‘ “Go back to sleep, my lord,” his wife answered him. “It is only a cherry blossom falling.”

‘Not over a year later, this man returned to Roku-No-Miya with his wife and retinue. He had paused at a roadside inn to wait out inclement weather and there had sent a number of notes to his former mistress. Not one was answered and thus, piqued, he left his wife at the house of her father and set off in search of the castle at Roku-No-Miya.

‘When he arrived, he almost passed it by, so changed was it. The great wood and iron gates that had become so familiar to him were but stumps in the loamy earth and, down the road, the high blue lacquered torii, around which he and the lady used to stroll in the spring and summer, was gone.

‘The castle itself he found uninhabitable. Some immense storm had completely demolished the east wing and the rest was a shambles.

‘In the old samurai’s quarters he found only an old, time-weary nun. She .was, she said, the daughter of one of the lady’s servants. When he inquired after the lady’s whereabouts, she said, “Alas, my lord, no one knows.”

‘He went out searching for her but no one in the district claimed to have seen her.

‘One dreary, rain-filled night, he stopped at a crossroads beside a monk and, hearing a voice he was certain was familiar, peered through the loose slats of a board house. Instantly he recognized the withered woman on the floor as his mistress. Rushing with the monk to her side he looked upon her face. She was surely dying and he asked the monk to recite a sutra over her. “Invoke the name of the Amida Buddha,” the monk implored the lady. To which she replied, “I see a blazing carriage … No, it is a golden lotus.” “Please, my lady,” the monk cried, “you must call out to the Amida Buddha. We have no power over transmigration, otherwise. You must call to Him with all your heart.”

‘ “I see nothing,” the lady cried. “Nothing but darkness.”

‘“My lady-“

‘ “Darkness and a cold wind blowing. A black wind, so cold.”

The monk did his best to assist her while the man prayed to the Amida Buddha. Gradually the lady’s cries grew fainter, at last mingling with the sound of the wind whistling through the trees.’

Yukio was quiet for some time.

‘Is that the end of the story?’

‘Not quite. On the night of the full moon, some days later, the old monk sat by the same crossroads, pulling his ragged cloak about his bony knees in an effort to keep out the cold.

‘A samurai came by singing a song and, seeing the monk, paused to hunker down next to him. “Is this the place?” he asked. “It is said in the district of Roku-No-Miya the weeping of a woman can be heard sometimes at night. What do you know of this?”

‘ “Listen,” was all the monk would say. And the samurai listened. He heard nothing at all save the tiny night sounds. Then, of a sudden, he thought he heard a woman’s cry of grief. “What is that? “he said.

‘ “Pray,” said the monk. “Pray for a spirit that knows neither heaven nor hell.” But the samurai, having no God, merely looked at the monk and walked on.’

They ate breakfast at the hotel and then went outside. It was cold and damp, the fog still swirling with curled tendrils underfoot. They saw the train on which they had arrived still standing at the station - way station was more like it. It was merely a central platform between two sets of tracks with enormous rough-hewn pillars of wood supporting a slanting, pagoda-like roof, lacquered on top against the debilitating effects of the weather and the salt air, but quite naked underneath. The scent of cedar was still powerful.

As they watched, a skeleton crew swung onto the train and, several moments later, it crawled a small distance onto a section of track set into an enormous disk which, as the train stopped, turned one hundred and eighty degrees. The train now pulled slowly into the opposite side of the platform, ready for the return journey north to Osaka.

The show over, they walked slowly away. The sky was perfectly white, the sun diffuse and ragged within the mist.

They were quite near the harbour and Nicholas could already make out two or three high white sails of the fishing boats manoeuvring carefully away from the quay. Past them, he knew, though hidden now, lurked the flatlands of the Asian shore.

As they came up on the headland, he thought he could make out the dark brown hills, due south, of Bunzen Province across the narrow straits on the island of Kyushu.

‘How peaceful here,’ Yukio said, stretching like a cat. ‘How different from Tokyo or Osaka or even Kyoto, as if the war never touched this place, nor industrialization. We might be in the seventeenth century.’

‘Full of samurai and the ladies of samurai, eh?’

She took a deep breath. ‘It’s like being at the end of the world - or the beginning.’ She turned to him, put her slender fingers around his wrist. He was startled at the nonsexual intimacy it conveyed. The sharp smell of drying fish hung heavily in the air, clinging to their nostrils like paint. Great grey and purple gulls wheeled, crying, in the low sky, half seen. ‘Why don’t we stay here, Nicholas.’

‘Here?’

She nodded her head like a child. ‘Yes. Right here. Why not? It’s idyllic. The rest of the world doesn’t exist here. We can forget. Be free. Start all over again. Like being born again without hurt or sin.” He looked at her and her grip on him tightened convulsively. ‘Oh, please,’ she said, her voice as hushed and echoey as if she were talking in a cathedral. ‘Let’s not go on. What for? What can there be waiting in Kumamoto to compare to this? You have me; there’s the sea. We could go sailing. Out into the ocean. Even to the continent. It’s not so very far away. How much time would it take? And then. And then…’

‘You can’t really mean that,” he said. ‘You have to be realistic, Yukio.’

‘Realistic?’ she cried. ‘What do you think I am being? There’s nothing for me back there.” She flung her arm out to the north, from where they had come. ‘There’s no love, no life. And to the south, in Kumamoto? What’s there? Saigo. Saigo and his damnable secrets. I don’t want any part of all that. It terrifies me.’

They had passed a street vendor, shrouded in fog, and Nicholas detached himself from her for a moment, went back, bought two small paper cups of tofu in a sticky sweet brown glaze. He gave her one. A wooden spoon was stuck in the centre of the sweet.

She looked at it, then at him. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she said. A strong gust of wind, humid with the fecundity of the sea, whipped around them and she had to peel her hair away from her face. A few strands clung to the wet corner of her lips. The rest of her hair, unbound, was like a scarf worn in midwinter, flying out behind her. ‘You treat me like a child. You buy me a sweet as if I’ve just awakened from a nightmare.’ She batted the paper cup from his outstretched hand. It hit the ground with a fat splat and stayed there, a misshapen lump of white and brown. ‘What I’m feeling is not going to go away, despite what you may think. I go to sleep at night and wake up the next morning hoping that it is all a dream. But it’s not. Don’t you see that?’ He began to walk, she with him. ‘Nicholas, please.’ Her body was bent slightly, either against the wind or against her emotions; perhaps both. I’m begging you. Let’s stay here. I don’t want to go across to Kyushu.’

‘But why not? You knew where we were coming when you insisted I bring you along. What did you imagine would happen?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said miserably. ‘I didn’t think that far ahead. I’m not like you in that respect. I can’t plan ahead. I never know what I am going to do, how I am going to feel until I do it. I didn’t go with it all the way until the end. I just wanted to be with you -‘ Her hand flew to her mouth and her eyes opened wide. She whirled away from him, bent over.

‘Yukio-‘

‘Leave me alone. I don’t know what I’m saying any more.”

He threw away the cup, held her by her shoulders. ‘I don’t understand,” he said. ‘Please-talk to me.’

‘You know I can’t do that,’ she said, ‘very well.’ Her back was still to him.

‘Yukio’ - he held her tighter to him - ‘you must tell me.’

‘I can’t do it. I can’t.’

He spun her around. ‘Yes you can. I know you can.” He stared into her frightened eyes, enlarged now by incipient tears. ‘Will it help if I tell you?’

‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’ But at least she knew what he meant.

‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how long I’ve known it and not said it. I -‘ Was this why he was terrified?

‘No. No,’ she said. ‘Don’t say it. Please. I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it.’

‘But why not?’

‘Because,’ she said fiercely, her face wrenched in a snarl, ‘I believe you.”

He almost laughed with relief. ‘And is that so bad?’

‘Don’t you understand yet?’ Her face was so close to his, her eyes seemed crossed. ‘I feel like I’m going to die. I’m not equipped -‘

‘Yes you are!’ He shook her so that her hair flew across her face and her lower lip trembled. ‘Everyone is. You just don’t know it.’

‘I can’t handle it.’ Her voice was almost a sob. A boat hooted over their shoulders, the rhythmic rumble of its diesel reaching them as a vibration up their legs until it had passed, its green and gold stack lost in the mist. He could not even see as far back up the foreshore to where the vendor must still be, hawking his sweet tofu.

‘I am committed now,’ he said, deliberately changing the subject. ‘I’ve said I’d come.’

‘You can always change your mind. No one’s locked you into one decision.’ Her voice had taken on a pleading edge. But was it for him or for herself?

‘My commitment is to myself,’ he said softly. ‘I must find out what Saigo is doing in Kumamoto.’

‘Why? Why is that so important? Who cares what he’s doing? Who is it going to affect? Neither of us. Why can’t you just let it go? It’s such a small thing.’

‘It’s not,’ he said despairingly. ‘It’s not a small thing at all.’ But he wondered if there was any way he could explain it to her. How could he when he was not even sure he could explain it to himself?

‘It’s come down to that fight you two had in the dojo,’ she said cannily. ‘It’s like you have each other by the throat and neither of you will let go. You’ll destroy each other that way, don’t you see? One of you has to let go, otherwise … Why can’t it be you?’

‘There’s a matter of honour.’ He only knew it now, a revelation like the sun as it first slips over the horizon, beginning to defeat the long night’s chill.

‘Oh, don’t give me that one,’ she said shortly. ‘That kind of honour went out of style a long time ago.’

How little she must understand of life, he thought. ‘For some of us, it’s never gone out of style.’

‘For the samurai,’ she said tartly. ‘The elite of Japan. The warriors who hurl themselves unhesitatingly into battle. Who live to die in combat?’ She laughed, a harsh, discomforting sound. ‘Now who needs a strong dose of reality? You’re the same, the two of you. Two rabid dogs who’ll worry a leg off before they’ll give up and let go.’

‘Not the same,’ he said. ‘Not the same at all. Saigo hates everything I stand for. My mixed blood; my love of Japan combined with my abominable Caucasian features. It rankles him that someone who looks the way I do should be better than him at anything, especially something so important as bujutsu.’

‘Important? What’s so goddamned important about bujutsu? What has any of that to do with living, with feeling -‘

‘You’re a good one to talk about that.’ Knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as it was out of his mouth. He saw the look on her face, said, reaching out for her, ‘I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean -‘